Follow me on Twitter

I dropped by this site because my friend’s daughter has Cushings and I wanted to learn more. Is there any chance that Cushings might be manageable or improvable in a way similar to what Izabella Wentz proposes for Hashimotos?

I dropped by this site because my friend’s daughter has Cushings and I wanted to learn more. Is there any chance that Cushings might be manageable or improvable in a way similar to what Izabella Wentz proposes for Hashimotos?

Jayne was diagnosed with Cushing's disease and became pregnant despite her illness, which usually makes women infertile. Jayne was the subject of a Live Interview in the Cushings Help Voice Chat / Podcast series.

I would love to take one of the surveys mentioned in this news article. My Cushing’s went into “remission” just over 31 years ago but I still feel the effects of having had it. Pre-Cushing’s I had no problem working a full day, having a piano studio overflowing with students, going out at night, cleaning the house, being a normal mom...

Pituitary tumors, like those that cause Cushing’s disease, have significant effects on a patient’s physical, mental, and social health, all of which influence their work status and health-related quality of life.

Michelle is from Santa Monica, CA. She is not yet diagnosed with Cushing's but gained 50 pounds with no change in activity or eating. She sent an article on Cyclical Cushing's to her doctor at the Mayo Clinic.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the clinical use of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner — the ultra-high-field 7T Terra MRI — with unprecedented resolution that allows for more reliable images of the brain. The approach recently allowed the precise localization of a small tumor in the pituitary gland, which standard MRI had failed t […]

If you’ve got your finger on the pulse of health trends, it’s likely you’ve been hearing the current buzzwords “cortisol creates belly fat” and “cortisol causes muscle wasting and fat storage.” These are the type of catch phrases that gain momentum every few years. And although some of the fads and trends showing up seasonally in fitness are myths, this caut […]

Today is the 31st anniversary of my pituitary surgery at NIH. As one can imagine, it hasn’t been all happiness and light. Most of my journey has been documented here and on the message boards – and elsewhere around the web.

Patients with growth hormone deficiency due to nonfunctioning pituitary adenoma experienced excessive morbidity due to cerebral infarction and sepsis regardless of whether they received long-term GH therapy, whereas treatment was associated with a normal incidence of type 2 diabetes, despite higher BMI and more severe hypopituitarism in treated patients..

Meta

An experimental drug called pasireotide reduced levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol and improved symptoms in patients with Cushing’s disease, a new study found.

Cushing’s disease is a rare (three to five cases per million people) hormonal disorder that causes a wide range of health problems and, if untreated, significantly increases a patient’s risk of dying at a much younger age than normal, researchers said in a news release.

Weight gain, high blood pressure, mood swings, irregular or absent menstrual periods, insulin resistance, glucose intolerance and type 2 diabetes are among the symptoms of Cushing’s disease. It is a form of Cushing’s syndrome, which is caused by prolonged exposure of the body’s tissues to high levels of the hormone cortisol.

This phase 3 study of 162 patients in 18 countries found that treatment with pasireotide reduced cortisol secretion by an average of 50 percent and returned some patient’s cortisol levels to normal.

A phase 3 study means that a drug is in the final stages of testing that drugs undergo before they can be approved for treatment of a specific disease.

The study, funded by Novartis Pharma, appears in the March 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, is not associated with the study but is familiar with its findings.

Mezitis said the study showed that the experimental treatment “improved metabolic abnormalities and emotional difficulties. Therefore, pasireotide injections become an alternative to surgical resection of the pituitary ACTH-secreting tumor, and may be shown to work with the FDA-approved mifepristone, which blocks the action of cortisol at receptors in the body.”

Elevated blood sugar (glucose) levels occurred in 73 percent of the patients who took the drug, a side effect that requires close attention, according to senior study author Dr. Beverly Biller, of Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Those patients who already were diabetic had the greatest increases in blood sugar, and those who were prediabetic were more likely to become diabetic than those who began with normal blood sugar,” Biller said in the hospital news release. “So this is real and needs to be monitored carefully.”

Mezitis agreed that careful patient monitoring is important. “Blood-sugar elevations are dose-dependent with pasireotide and will need to be managed as indicated for diabetes,” he said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about Cushing’s syndrome.